We bid farewell to the Yohji Yamamoto Gansevoortstore as the company, plagued with financial troubles, begin to wind down its North American operations, ceasing all distribution on the continent.
The short lived Gansevoort store which opened with great fanfare in 2008 is designed by Junya Ishigami, a protege of Kazuyo Sejima. It is a remodeled wedge shape single storey building at the corner of a street junction. The exisitng brickwork was exposed giving the facade of the building a raw tactile quality. The brickwork is also rendered with a certain lightness, looking as if it is a thin skin folded with precision, forming razor sharp corners and soft subtle curves. The brickwork, punctuated with generous openings of clear frameless glass, provides a clear vista into and through the interior space.
The building volume is spliced into two portions with an oblique cut in the centre. The triangular volume housed the retail space while the other volume contained the stockroom and private areas. The urbanistic quality of this move is undeniable, it also gives the store it's quirk. which is the need for sales staff to go out of the building and go into the other wing to have access to stock and sizes not displayed on the sales floor.
According to ny.racked.com, the store closed last Tuesday with a flash 90% sale before the shutters went down for good. And apparently, Yohji's fanancial troubles are in great part caused by the recent spurt of lavish store openings, which besides the Gansevoort store, includes the Rue Cambon store in Paris and Antwerp store in the MOMU building. And as the mens fashion weeks begin for the fall winter 2010 season with Yohji Yamamoto Pour Homme missing on the schedule for the second season, we hear murmurs that the company is planning to close down the Antwerp and Rue Cambon stores. The company is now going through a great structural change, that will have a lasting impact on its future as a viable label. We can only hope that Yohji's creative integrity will not be further compromised.
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